Ira Sukrungruang My father had a porno collection. Because I was alone most of the night—my parents worked the night shift—I was in the habit of snooping through their desks and drawers....
Anne Panning —from my mother: her measuring tape, golden and waxy, spiraled from storage in her sewing basket. It’s a gangly ten-footer, built for quilts and bridal veils; I wear it like a...
The word “benign” has several meanings. It can mean kindly or harmless. Or gentle – which is nice. I thought it also meant “sitting around doing nothing,” but this incorrect.
If you are...
Gail Griffin 1. Some memories seem to rise on their own from nowhere, faces slowly appearing in deep water. This is how Gloria came back. One day in my middle age, I remembered that I had had a...
Colleen Abel The word deviant. A lovely, leering word, its two keening e sounds and the snap shut of its final syllable. You would never guess this body harbors such linguistic loveliness....
Nikki Reklitis First Things First He will walk towards you in a sky-blue shirt and you will know it’s him. His eyes will be wide and deep and beautiful. You will walk together past Mooney’s Bay,...
Scott Larson … In the spring, the local farm supply store sells recently hatched baby chicks. Gallus gallus domesticus. They keep them in large rubber tubs, right in the middle of the shopping...
Bahiyyih El-Shabbaz Winner, 2014 Creative Nonfiction Award APRIL It’s early April, and my tummy is still a valley. By the summer, it will be a bunny hill. By mid-fall, a mountain. It’s not so...
Ray Shea paperHere is one thing I do know: I didn’t write down enough of this when it was happening, and now there is nobody I can ask. This is why I am trying to piece together, from the available...
Anna B. Sutton The nurse is small, chubby and folded over the desk like laundry folded then forgotten. She’s wearing worn pink scrubs and frameless glasses under a bowl-cut of thinning brown curls....
